MiHoYo

Further information: miHoYo

MiHoYo
Type	HoYoverse

miHoYo (Chinese: 米哈游 Mǐhāyóu) is a Chinese video game development and publishing studio based in Shanghai, China. The company is the creator of various video games including Zenless Zone Zero, its most popular titles being Honkai Impact 3rd, Genshin Impact, and Honkai: Star Rail.

In addition to games, miHoYo has created a variety of products such as animations, comics, music, novels, and merchandise. The original music for miHoYo's media is produced by its own music studio HOYO-MiX, led by music director Jinhan "Zoe" Cai (蔡近翰).

Since February 2022, miHoYo's subsidiary Cognosphere Pte. Ltd. d/b/a HoYoverse is responsible for all of the company's global operations outside of China.

History

Something New, Something Exciting, Something Out of Imagination

—miHoYo's R&D Philosophy

miHoYo was founded in 2011 by three computer science students from Shanghai Jiao Tong University: Wei "Forrest" Liu (刘伟), also known as Da Wei (大伟哥), who acts as the company's general president; Haoyu "Hugh" Cai (蔡浩宇), the company's CEO and lead producer, and Yuhao Luo (罗宇皓). The three shared an interest for technology and ACG (abbreviation of "anime, comics, and games") culture.

CiCi as an undergraduate student joined the group and later became the lead artist for Honkai Impact 3rd. He later participated in character design for Genshin Impact. Tianwen was the company's first programmer.

Timeline

• In 2011, miHoYo released their first title FlyMe2theMoon on the iOS platform as an indie developer.
• In 2012, miHoYo Co., Ltd. was registered. The first game released after the company founding was Honkai Gakuen on iOS platform. (Because of its 32-bit kernel, Honkai Gakuen is now hidden on App Store after iOS 12.)
• In 2014, they released Honkai Gakuen 2 (which serves as a replacement of original Honkai Gakuen).
  • The project of Honkai Impact 3rd was started in the same year with a 7-person team.
  • Since then, they have seen success releasing anime-style games that primarily appealed to mobile gamers. The majority of their early titles were successful within Asia, however they would not reach global success until the release of Honkai Impact 3rd.
• On October 14, 2016, Honkai Impact 3rd was released in China.
  • It was the first miHoYo game released worldwide. Other servers were publicly opened months later: February 22, 2017 for Japan; May 18, 2017 for Taiwan; October 17, 2017 for Korea; November 1, 2017 for South East Asia; March 28, 2018 for North America and Europe.
• On May 31, 2019, Cooking with Valkyries, the anime adaption of Honkai Impact 3rd was announced, and broadcasted starting from June 28, 2019.
• In June 2019, Genshin Impact was announced, and had its first Closed Beta Test on June 21.
• In July 2019, Tears of Themis was announced with its first PV on July 29.
• On December 18, 2019, on the NVIDIA GTC China 2019 conference, Huang Renxun disclosed miHoYo's development of a third-person shooter game code-named "Project X," which will be released in 2021 and supports ray tracing technology.
• On July 30, 2020, Tears of Themis was released.
• On August 4, 2020, N0va Desktop, miHoYo's first dynamic desktop wallpaper software, was released on PC.
• On September 15, 2020, Genshin Impact was released with PC technical open test, and was simultaneously released globally on September 28.
  • Genshin Impact is one of their most popular games with 17 million downloads within release week and makes $6 million a day.
• On December 1, 2020, N0va Desktop was released on Android.
• On October 5, 2021, Honkai: Star Rail was announced, and had its first Closed Beta Test on October 27.
• On February 14, 2022, the HoYoverse brand was unveiled as the trade name of Cognosphere and all of miHoYo's operations outside of China were moved under this brand, with global-facing mihoyo.com subdomains redirected to hoyoverse.com subdomains (but not Chinese subdomains).
• On April 26, 2023, Honkai: Star Rail was released worldwide for iOS, Android, and Microsoft Windows. It released for PlayStation 5 on October 11th, 2023 globally.

Games Developed

Year	Title			Genre	Platform
	English	Chinese	Japanese
2011	FlyMe2theMoon			RPG, Paid	iOS
2012	Zombiegal Kawaii	崩坏学园 Bēnghuài Xuéyuán	崩壊学園 Hōkai Gakuen	Shooter, Paid	iOS
2014	Houkai Gakuen 2 (Guns Girl Z)	崩坏学园2 Bēnghuài Xuéyuán 2	崩壊学園2 Hōkai Gakuen 2	Shooter, Gacha	iOS, Android
2016	Honkai Impact 3rd	崩坏3 Bēnghuài 3	崩壊3rd Hōkai 3rd	Hack'n'Slash, Action ‎RPG, Gacha	iOS, Android, PC
2020	Genshin Impact	原神 Yuánshén	原神 Genshin	Action RPG, Gacha	iOS, Android, PC, PS4, PS5
2020	Tears of Themis	未定事件簿 Wèidìng Shìjiànbù	未定事件簿 Mitei Jikenbo	Adventure, Gacha	iOS, Android
2023	Honkai: Star Rail	崩坏：星穹铁道 Bēnghuài: Xīngqióng Tiědào	崩壊：スターレイル Hōkai: Sutāreiru	Turn-based Strategy RPG	iOS, Android, PC, PS5, GeForce Now
2024	Zenless Zone Zero	绝区零 Jué Qū Líng	ゼンレスゾーンゼロ Zenresu Zōn Zero	Action RPG, Roguelike	iOS, Android, PC, PS5

Trivia

• Liu Wei personally explained the origin of the name miHoYo at the 2019 campus recruitment of Zhejiang University, that:
  • H and Y are the initial letters of the names of the co-founders, 蔡浩宇 Cài Hàoyǔ and 罗宇皓 Luó Yǔhào (while Liu Wei himself is the mascot);
  • HoYo is because they thought the popular companies' names all have two letter O, e.g. Google, Microsoft, Facebook;
  • mi is because that the name HoYo has already been registered by others, and they had to add more letters; they thus borrowed the mi from otaku's favorite — Hatsune Miku, and finally the name became miHoYo.

External Links

• Official Website (miHoYo)
• Official Website (HoYoverse)
• bilibili
• Sina Weibo